NASCAR: The all-time record that could be broken at any time
By Asher Fair
Thanks to Chase Elliott’s win last Sunday at Circuit of the Americas, an all-time NASCAR Cup Series record could fall at any time.
Hendrick Motorsports entered the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season with 263 victories since they began competing in 1984, including seven in their 2020 championship-winning season. Chase Elliott, the 2020 champion, earned them five of those seven victories.
Through the first 13 races on the 2021 schedule, the team had won four times, but Elliott was the only one of their four drivers who had not yet found victory lane.
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William Byron won the season’s third race at Homestead-Miami Speedway before Kyle Larson won the following weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
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Alex Bowman then won at Richmond Raceway and Dover International Speedway, with his win in the latter leading a historic 1-2-3-4 Hendrick Motorsports sweep.
Then this past Sunday in the inaugural race at Circuit of the Americas, Elliott was declared the winner after rain halted the race after 54 of the scheduled 68 laps around the 20-turn, 3.427-mile (5.515-kilometer) road course in Austin, Texas. It marked another 1-2 finish for the team, as Larson finished in second place.
As a result, Hendrick Motorsports now have 268 victories to their credit, a mark which no longer trails any team on the all-time wins list.
That mark is tied for the all-time record with that of Petty Enterprises, which fielded 2,817 entries from 1949 to 2008. Going back to their inaugural season in the Cup Series, Rick Hendrick’s team have fielded 4,329.
This wins record is a record that could now belong solely to Hendrick’s organization at any time now, and it would be quite surprising if they don’t secure win number 269 at some point in the near future, having won the last two races, five of the last 12 and seven of the last 16 going back to last season.
The next race on the schedule is the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, a race that Elliott probably would have won last year if not for Byron spinning in the closing laps to bring out a caution flag. Elliott did win the other race on the track’s oval last year.
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This year’s Coca-Cola 600 is set to be broadcast live on Fox beginning at 6:00 p.m. ET this evening, and Larson is set to start from the pole position with all three of his teammates set to start inside the top seven.